


Bruises

by MoonCatcher



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bruises, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3269588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonCatcher/pseuds/MoonCatcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's mind is clear, but his body remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bruises

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by [this Tumblr post](http://disconnected-child.tumblr.com/post/106428869933/221bitssmallerontheoutside-civicbooty).
> 
> All mistakes are mine.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Steve calls from the kitchen, loud enough for his voice to be clear over all the clinking as he takes out plates and glasses and sets everything on the table. It’s nothing fancy, but an evening after a successful mission deserves something more than pizza eaten while watching a TV from a couch.

It’s been a long week, more than that if all the previous briefings and preparations and strategy meetings (that didn’t really help in the end anyway) count. Followed by the mission, and another round of check-ups and talking. The green light for dismissing came in early this afternoon, and finally opening the door of his, their, apartment was about the best thing.

Bucky collapsed on the couch while Steve was in the shower (“You go first.”—“It’s fine, Steve, I’ll just crash here for a bit.”), and Steve didn’t have the heart to wake him up until later, when it was almost dinner time.

The water has stopped a while ago, so Steve half expects Bucky to walk into the kitchen in a moment. He fills up the plates and places both on the table.

Soon Bucky is really there, only when Steve turns around on his way over to the fridge to grab them drinks, it’s not the sight he’s been expecting at all.

“Sorry it took so long,” Bucky mumbles, toweling his hair before draping the towel over his shoulders. He’s wearing a pair of drawstring pants and nothing more, his bare feet tapping on the wooden floor when he finally moves over to the table.

Steve’s not taken aback by the lack of clothes or all the skin, it’s not the first time. Back then, in a different time when they both were different people, walking around shirtless was the only way to survive Brooklyn summers, and Bucky has never been one to feel shame, anyway. It’s not the skin—but at the same time, it is.

The towel covers a lot of it now, but Steve has caught a glimpse anyway. Livid, angry bruises all over Bucky’s torso, a purple mark running across his shoulder. No open wounds, no blood, none Steve could see, at least. Bucky’s quick to avoid bullets, and good enough to break any arm that tries to get to him with a knife. But the bruises, all of them—Steve’s breath gets stuck in his throat—it’s like Bucky just let someone beat him. Repeatedly. It doesn’t make sense.

Bucky sits down, clearly oblivious of Steve’s perplexed stare (or simply ignoring it), and dips a fork into the pile of mashed potatoes on the plate in front of him.

Steve follows suit, but spends the dinner time stealing glances at Bucky over the table.

First he tries to remember details of the mission, tries to go through it all minute after minute with as many details as possible. With more details than he remembered this morning during debriefing. Steve remembers keeping an eye on Bucky, just like Bucky always covers his back in return. They are in this together now, and Steve is not making another mistake of letting Bucky out of his sight. Paying attention to every moment he can remember, Steve goes through the fights and searching through ruins, more fights, even jumping off a plane and making their way through the enemy base, one of many. Bucky was by his side. All this time. And everything seemed fine.

Steve shakes his head, pushing aside images of Bucky being captured and tortured, beaten up—that didn’t happen, not this time.

And he must be staring now, because the next thing Steve knows is Bucky kicking his shin under the table.

“What?” Bucky asks. Grumbles, more likely. That’s what Bucky is like now, after a mission. Tensed, distanced. Neither is conscious. Steve already knows. It’s like Bucky is still locked in the mission. It always fades after a day or two though, and Bucky told him not to worry. So Steve doesn’t. Not really. Not usually. However, usually he doesn’t get to see Bucky’s battered body right after a mission is over.

Steve swallows. Then moves his head just slightly, nodding towards Bucky. “That doesn’t look nice. Did you have a medical check before we left?” And he’s not sure what would be worse, doctors letting Bucky leave like this, or Bucky intentionally avoiding having his wounds checked. At the beginning, when Bucky started working with Steve and the others, he admitted he doesn’t like doctors poking at him and studying him. Too many memories flashing back to light where he doesn’t want them. But they found a compromise. And things worked.

Bucky doesn’t look up from his plate. Mashed potatoes might’ve never been more interesting. “It’s nothing.” He shrugs. “Got worse.”

“Buck, look at me.”

It’s not meant to be an order, but Bucky’s head snaps up anyway. Alerted.

Steve reasons with himself against feeling guilty. “When— How did it happen? I would’ve noticed if someone had...had, hurt you.”

“It’s just a couple of bruises. If you didn’t notice, there was some fighting going on.” Bucky cracks a smile, a little broken grin, but all the action does is bring Steve’s attention to the torn lip and painfully looking scratches on Bucky’s chin. Steve needs to take another breath to stop himself from fussing too much. “Fine,” Bucky sighs and puts down the fork, “I’ll get a shirt. I was going to... anyway, before dinner. I was hungry, though.” He gestures in a few different directions, his room, the bathroom, the almost empty plate.

As if hiding the obvious was a solution.

And it comes back to Steve in one quick sequence. All the times before. The months Bucky has been living here in Steve’s spare bedroom. The long sleeved shirts and hoodies thrown in the laundry the weeks after every mission. This is not the first time. Neither are these the first bruises. And all this time, Bucky’s been keeping it from him—very much deliberately.

Bucky gets up, but stops after a step or two.

“I’m not a super soldier, Steve. These,” his hand jerks up and down, implying the bruises, “take time to fade.”

“That’s not the point.” Steve shakes his head.

“I don’t," Bucky starts quietly, fingers of his flesh hand curling into a fist, twisting the soft cotton of his pants. It’s not the right choice of words, obviously, because he hisses and tries again. “In action, when I’m... when there are... I don’t feel it. Nothing is more important than the mission, okay?” There must be something in Steve’s face before Bucky even finishes the sentence, something twisted between horror and pity, like they are back at the beginning when Bucky still wasn’t quiet aware of himself all the time, his mind jumping between self-awareness and numbed, blank slate. Bucky remembers the way Steve was looking at him back then, and it makes him sick. He bites his lip and tugs on the towel around his shoulders. “It will... it heals fast. Not as fast as yours, I guess, but—”

“Have you talked about it with someone? Buck, that’s—god,” Steve rubs his palms over his face. “What if you got hurt? Really hurt? No mission is worth it,” he says quietly. It’s selfish and very much non-Captain-America, but Steve’s not letting yet another mission, no matter what it would be, get between him and Bucky.

Bucky watches him for a moment, nervously pulling the towel down to hide an extra nasty patch of bruised skin. There’s a twitch, something Steve remembers from before, a weak signal that appeared just before Bucky’s clouded mind drove him towards the door or into the farthest corner in the room, to hide, disappear, become a shadow again, a ghost. The impulses to do so ebbed with time. And even now, Bucky seems to be fighting it.

The next moment he turns around and leaves the kitchen, anyway.

Steve doesn’t follow him, giving him some space. That’s what he’s supposed to do.

After a while he gets up and cleans the table, washes the dishes, and as he passes by the door of Bucky’s room on his way to his own, he slows down his steps.

Once again, the mission replays in his head, this time with even bigger focus on Bucky, any detail Steve can remember. From the moment of their arrival, Bucky joking with Natasha in the car (Natasha is one of the very few people who can make him really laugh, and Steve is starting to consider a Russian course so he would understand what those two talk about), to the moment they were picked up afterwards. On the surface, in the official mission report and even the things Steve would usually remember first, there is nothing significant. They all did their job, fought the bad guys, won this round. Bucky probably killed more people than Steve and Natasha combined, but Steve was by Bucky’s side during the war and Bucky killing people doesn’t weird him out or make him uncomfortable. They all do what is necessary to survive, and to make the world a better place. Then Steve thinks harder, his hand reaches out to knock on the door, but he changes his mind in the last second, and goes into his room. He needs to think. Think about the moment they got off the car and something about Bucky changed. No, everything changed. His walk, the whole posture... Steve can now clearly remember meeting Bucky’s eyes for a second, and it was like facing the Winter Soldier on the bridge in DC all over again. Only this time it was Bucky, really Bucky, not just his face. It’s confusing.

Steve lies down. It’s still kind of early to sleep, so he stares at the ceiling, recalling the events of the last week, Bucky making his way through the enemies, following the plan as well as orders to change something due to momentary situation.

Bucky may say he’s not a super soldier, but the picture in Steve’s memory shows just that anyway. Bucky’s probably more super soldier than Steve will ever be. He’s the one following orders, carrying on with a mission until its successful end.

Steve remembers one time in Ukraine when he was already calling a mission off because the risks were too high, but Bucky was already halfway inside the factory they were supposed to clear—and they did. Bucky did. Steve remembers himself wanting to beat the shit out of Bucky and at the same time hold him for weeks, when it was finally over and Bucky managed to get out just in time before an explosion tore the whole place down.

When it eventually gets late, Steve realizes that now he can’t sleep anymore. Not when every time he closes his eyes, he’s flooded with images of Bucky getting hurt and not caring about his injuries, Bucky going on with a mission in spite of wounds and pain. Steve would kick himself for not noticing any of it before. God, Bucky lives with him. It’s like back then, they are supposed to take care of each other, watch each other’s back.

Steve gets up and this time doesn’t pull his hand away from knocking on Bucky’s door.

There’s no answer.—Of course not, it’s close to midnight and Bucky must’ve been tired.

With a little hesitation, Steve cracks the door open, only to take a look and make sure Bucky’s alright. He’ll probably never stop looking and making sure that Bucky is alright from now on. He’ll fuss and do all sorts of annoying things, until Bucky gets mad and tells him not to, and even after that Steve will go on.

“You coming in?” Bucky mumbles into the darkness of the room, and Steve watches the darker, solid form on the bed shift.

He slips into the bedroom, suddenly feeling stupid about the next move. But Bucky shifts again, and there’s emptied space on the bed—like back in Brooklyn, almost, roles changed (“What are you doing, Buck?”—“Keeping you warm, you punk. Could hear your bones rattle from across the room.”).

Steve settles on his side, facing the dark outlines of Bucky’s head and shoulder on the pillow next to him.

They are quiet, until Bucky says, “‘m sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out.” He turns over. They are looking at each other now, even though there’s nothing much to see. Steve knows Bucky’s face by heart, has drawn it over and over again until the new little lines in the corners of his eyes and on his forehead melted into the picture he carried in his memories through almost a whole century. Sometimes, when Bucky thinks Steve’s not looking, Bucky watches Steve, too, so Steve thinks Bucky tries to do the same. Re-learn Steve’s face. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

Steve is quiet. Fighting with himself to not reach out and touch where he knows the battered marks are hidding underneath the shirt Bucky’s wearing.

“I forget, sometimes,” Bucky says after a while, “to care about anything but the target. Like someone flips a switch inside me and everything goes black. You read the file.” It’s something they don’t talk about, Bucky doesn’t like talking about it. “This body is a weapon, Steve.”

Steve takes a breath, wants to say, "not anymore, stop it, it’s not true".

“I’m not gonna…lose myself. I remember who I am,” Bucky says before Steve can make up his mind about how to start, “but this is—it’s like a muscle memory. Give me orders and I’ll do whatever is necessary to…to finish my mission.”

(“Why do you always need to look out for troubles, you punk?”—“They were talking shit, someone had to tell them off. I just did what was necessary.”)

“This is not right, I’m the one who should have bruises all over and you should be worried sick about me.” A part of this, of having Bucky back, is not treating him like he’s fragile and might break at any moment. Steve knows. He also knows the bruises, indeed, will take only a couple of days to heal. Bucky wouldn’t have been cleaned to leave home if there had been any real medical problem. Steve is just—still unreasonably scared sometimes. He huffs a quiet laughter. “This is what it used to be like for you, isn’t it? It’s a payback for all the bloodied knees and torn lips you had to aid before.”

“Next time I’m letting a wall fall on my head to remind you of the summer of ‘37,” Bucky chuckles.

And they are fine. Steve wants to roll over and wrap himself around Bucky because, yeah, they are fine. Bruised and tired, different, but fine.

“Don’t you dare.” Instead of pouncing, Steve gives Bucky’s shoulder a nudge.

Bucky hisses and—

“Shit,” Steve pulls the hand away. “It does hurt. Why didn’t you tell anything, you jerk?”

“It’s really not so bad. Now sleep, or I’ll have to make you.”

Steve is not kicked out of the bed, and he quickly understands it’s the closest to an invitation to stay as he will get. This time, when he closes his eyes, he thinks of Brooklyn in ’37 and the sharp tingle of peroxide on his bleeding knees, of Bucky cursing and calling him an idiot, but bringing him a bottle of coke later anyway.

In the morning Steve notices Bucky is slightly limping while moving around the apartment, and also the pillow Bucky fluffs onto his side before sitting down on the couch, face tight as he tries not to wince. He's searching for comfort, something to soothe pain, the pain he’s been hiding all along before. Instead of being more worried though, Steve acknowledges the little things with a smile. He’s still worried, still doesn’t like how reckless Bucky can get without having an actual control over it, but the things Bucky can control—he doesn’t hide them from Steve anymore.

 

 


End file.
